Google has long listed Mountain View as the origin for Googlebot traffic, but that label does not reflect where requests actually leave Google’s network. Gary Illyes, a Google engineer, said on Bluesky that the location is a self-set text field attached to an IP range, not a verified geographic fact.
Illyes explained that Google typically marks its crawling IPs as originating in the United States, specifically Mountain View, yet the real exit point depends on which data-center cluster serves that address. An IP tied to an Atlanta cluster, he said, would show Atlanta as its egress point regardless of the declared label.
He added that IP addresses generally lack a fixed geographic location at all: they default to a registrant’s address or get assigned through anycast routing, the way addresses like 1.1.1.1 effectively exist everywhere at once. The exchange followed a question from John Mueller about why Googlebot appeared to originate elsewhere.
Anyone geolocating crawler IPs from server logs, or serving region-specific content based on where Googlebot appears to connect from, is reading a label rather than a location.
Barry Schwartz reported the Bluesky exchange for Search Engine Roundtable in mid-August 2026.
